The Truth About Dieting and Weight Loss

You may not like what I’m about to say, but dieting alone will
not help you to lose weight. Watching your diet alone is not
going to yield results unless it is coupled with proper
exercise. You have to make a conscious effort for this. And the
solution for this is a workout routine. Yes there are people
that lose weight just from cutting down on their fat intake,
carbohydrate intake, protein intake, or calories in general; but
have you seen the results under their clothes? It is not a
pretty sight! Without exercise (weight training in particular)
your body has no way of toning up, and you could be left with
near sagging skin with a non attractive shape. Also, losing
weight from diets is mostly water weight loss and not fat loss.
Do you want to lose water from your body and become dehydrated?
Or do you want to lose Fat? The absolute only way to burn a high
percentage of body fat is through exercise. The only reason why
anyone should choose a diet plan is to see which one can help
complement their workout program. The diet plan you choose
should be one that you can stick to for the rest of your life,
and it should be healthy for your body. Diet is such a short
term word, so think of dieting as changing your eating habits
for the long term. Your eating habits should provide you with
enough protein for your muscles and enough carbohydrates for
energy as well as other vital nutrients. Stay away from diets
that focus on losing weight quickly… Not only are they
unhealthy, but most of the weight you lose is water weight. Once
again, do you want to lose water or fat? If you want to lose
fat, you most definitely will not be losing it quickly unless
you know how to burn fat. Being that you are losing mostly water
on these quick weight loss diets, you will soon find out that
you will gain the weight back just as quick as you lost it (if
not faster). You must eat! If your body thinks you are starving,
it will feed on your muscle tissue for energy. It is not enough
to just take in enough calories each day for energy, but it is
how often you feed your body the calories. In order for your
metabolism to function correctly, you must eat at least 5-6
meals per day. The total calories of the 5-6 meals should equal
the amount of your daily calorie intake. Eating throughout the
day, gives your metabolism fuel to keep burning your stored body
fat. That said, you should still cut down on your calorie intake
to lose weight, but you also must know how many calories per day
is right for your body. Stay away from diets that say you must
eat protein and carbohydrates separately…

Protein and carbohydrates work together within your body; they
are team players, not individuals. Think of it like this: Mr.
Protein needs to take a taxi to get to the muscles cells to help
build and condition them. Mr. Insulin is the taxi and Mr.
Protein is not capable of calling a taxi, so Mr. Carbohydrate
will always call Mr. Insulin to transport Mr. Protein to the
muscles. The muscles cells love Mr. Protein, but they also must
have Mr. Carbohydrate for energy. Mr. Carbohydrate is very
outgoing and there is a lot of him to go around, but too much of
him is bad. On the other hand, not enough of him is also bad.
Muscle cells only need enough carbohydrates to fill the glycogen
stores. If more carbohydrates are present, it will get stored as
fat. Eating protein and carbohydrates will slow down the
absorption of carbohydrates which means that your body will have
time to burn off the extra carbohydrates before they are stored
as fat. So why not just significantly lower your carbohydrate
consumption? Because too much protein and very low carbohydrates
will cause you to overburden your liver and kidneys; could cause
dehydration (most people do not realize that metabolizing
protein requires you to drink more water); and your body will
not get the right amount of its preferred source of
energy-carbohydrates. So you see, eating these two nutrients
together allows your body to function like it should. The key is
to know how much carbohydrates and protein is the right amount
to satisfy your body’s needs. Bottom Line when it comes to
dieting and weight loss: Losing weight is easy. Losing weight by
losing fat the healthy way is more of a challenge. Don’t get
caught up into just losing weight. Understand that you need to
stay healthy at the same time that you are losing weight by
losing fat.

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